Podcast appearances and mentions of brian casel

saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by https://saas.group/, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies. In episode #15, Anna Nadeina talks with Brian Casel, serial indie hacker, founder of ClarityFlow and Instrumental Products, host of the Bootstrapped Web podcast, and a celebrity of the indie hacking world. ----------Episode's Chapters------------ 00:00 - Introduction to Brian and His Journey 03:00 - Transitioning from Services to Products 05:48 - The Acquisition Process: Insights and Experiences 11:56 - Focusing on ClarityFlow: The All-In Approach 18:06 - Balancing Pressure and Growth in SaaS 23:56 - Reflections on Investment and Business Strategy 30:41 - Navigating Business Transitions 32:28 - Understanding Burnout and Stress Management 39:01 - The Reality of Startup Success 42:25 - Diverse Goals in Entrepreneurship 50:22 - Lessons from Wins and Failures 53:58 - The Importance of Fast Execution Brian - https://www.linkedin.com/in/briancasel/ ClarityFlow - https://clarityflow.com/ Instrumental - https://instrumental.dev/ Subscribe to our channel to be the first to see the interviews that we publish twice a week - https://www.youtube.com/@saas-group Stay up to date: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaaS_group LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/14790796

What a fascinating episode with Daniel Vassallo, creator of smallbets.com.  From leaving Amazon to become self-employed, to experimenting and iterating on business models, software, books, courses, and finally his flagship community, Small Bets.

Had a fascinating conversation today with Joel Hooks who runs egghead.io and badass.dev.  We talked about about the evolving landscape of online education in the developer space.Recorded on September 5th, 2024.

Chris Oliver, the creator behind GoRails, Jumpstart, HatchBox and his new product, SellRepo, joins me to talk bootstrapping his Ruby on Rails training business and related tools with only a team of 3!  A great wide-ranging conversation.Recorded on September 4th, 2024Note:  Sorry!  My short intro audio is left speaker only... But that's fixed after the first minute!

I caught up with Josh Pigford today, founder of Maybe, ToolStash, and many other projects.  We covered a lot of ground across many of his different projects, but spent the bulk of this chat geeking out about programmatic SEO.  The strategy, the technical approach, and exactly what (and how) he built some of his AI-generated content marketing strategies for his projects.We recorded this interview on August 6th, 2024.Brian's update was recorded on August 6th, 2024. Brian's Product ConsultingI offer 2 flavors of product design & development consulting with SaaS companies:OneMonth.app -- I build your MVP SaaS product in one month!TailorMadeUI.com — I give your SaaS product's UI and UX an upgrade with tailor-made design components, all front-end coded (with TailwindCSS) and ready to plug into your codebase.Brian's Private PodcastSubscribe here (for free) to join my private podcast and community, called What's Next?  It's available on my podcast network platform, Ripple.fm.  Open Threads Podcast on YouTubeThis podcast is on YouTube!  You can watch full episodes on video by subscribing to the FSF Podcast Channel on YouTube.

Mike McAllister is a designer of brands, websites, products, and WordPress goodness... Here in part 2 of our conversation, we dive into Mike's current work on OllieWP, a new product that brings great design to the WordPress ecosystem.We also talked about the balance of working on products with taking on selective design consulting partnerships with clients.This conversation was recorded on March 6th, 2024Brian's update was recorded on May 6th, 2024. Brian's Product StudioMy product studio, Instrumental Products, is where I partner with SaaS companies to provide UI, UX and custom-built pages and components to give your SaaS a modern user experience.Brian's YouTube channelSubscribe to my YouTube channel where I'm building products and showing the process.Brian's NewsletterSubscribe to my newsletter where I send my best ideas and stories from working on products.This Podcast on YouTubeThis podcast is on YouTube!  You can watch full episodes on video by subscribing to the FSF Podcast Channel on YouTube.

Mike McAllister has an incredible track record as a designer of brands, websites, products, and WordPress goodness... In part 1, we talked about Mike's experience building a successful WordPress products business that was acquired by WPEngine, and what he learned from the transition between indie product founder to acquihired in a large organization.In part 2, we'll dive into Mike's current work on OllieWP, a new product for designing in blocks in WordPress.This conversation was recorded on March 6th, 2024

Here's my conversation with Shawn Adrian, co-founder of Input Logic, a product design and development agency.  They're also launching their own product in 2024 in the AI journaling space, called Stilo.ai.This conversation was recorded on March 5th, 2024.{{ campaign_start }}

Brian's update was recorded on May 6th, 2024.Daniel Coulbourne is the cofounder of Thunk.dev and the co-host of the Talking Businessly podcast.  We had a great conversation about the "80/20 model" in software development consulting, striking a balance between working with clients and building your own products and projects. This conversation was recorded on February 27th, 2024.{{ campaign_start }} Brian's Product StudioMy product studio, Instrumental Products, is where I partner with SaaS companies to provide UI, UX and custom-built pages and components to give your SaaS a modern user experience.Brian's YouTube channelSubscribe to my YouTube channel where I'm building products and showing the process.Brian's NewsletterSubscribe to my newsletter where I send my best ideas and stories from working on products.This Podcast on YouTubeThis podcast is on YouTube!  You can watch full episodes on video by subscribing to the FSF Podcast Channel on YouTube.

Jack McDade is the creator of the new course, Radical Design. He's also the founder of Statamic CMS.  In this contuation of our conversation, we talked about Jack's unique approach to designing things and how he strikes a balance between fun refreshing projects like this, and running a successful product company.Brian and Jack's conversation was recorded on February 20th, 2024.Brian's update was recorded on March 8th, 2024. Brian's Product StudioMy product studio, Instrumental Products, is where I partner with SaaS companies, creators, and founders to take product ideas from concept to launched.  Got something to ship?  Let's talk!Brian's YouTube channelSubscribe to my YouTube channel where I'm building products and showing the process.Brian's NewsletterSubscribe to my newsletter where I send my best ideas and stories from working on products.This Podcast on YouTubeThis podcast is on YouTube!  You can watch full episodes on video by subscribing to the FSF Podcast Channel on YouTube.

Jack McDade is the founder of Statamic CMS and the creator of the new course, Radical Design.  In this conversation, Jack shared his story of going from film maker to full stack designer and developer to building a website CMS product.Brian and Jack's conversation was recorded on February 20th, 2024.Brian's update was recorded on March 8th, 2024. Brian's Product StudioMy product studio, Instrumental Products, is where I partner with SaaS companies, creators, and founders to take product ideas from concept to launched.  Got something to ship?  Let's talk!Brian's YouTube channelSubscribe to my YouTube channel where I'm building products and showing the process.Brian's NewsletterSubscribe to my newsletter where I send my best ideas and stories from working on products.This Podcast on YouTubeThis podcast is on YouTube!  You can watch full episodes on video by subscribing to the FSF Podcast Channel on YouTube.

Sam Selikoff, cofounder of BuildUI, returns to the show and we talk all about NYC! New York City, one of my favorite places.  Brian and Sam's conversation was recorded on December 15th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on March 8th, 2024.(00:00) - Software founder life in NYC with Sam Selikoff (04:45) - What is the crowd like? (06:54) - New York's downfall - sports teams (08:42) - Working remotely in NYC (13:16) - City life vs. Suburb life (15:08) - NY energy (crazy and all!) (16:56) - Cost of living   Brian's Product StudioMy product studio, Instrumental Products, is where I partner with SaaS companies, creators, and founders to take product ideas from concept to launched.  Got something to ship?  Let's talk!Brian's YouTube channelSubscribe to my YouTube channel where I'm building products and showing the process.Brian's NewsletterSubscribe to my newsletter where I send my best ideas and stories from working on products.This Podcast on YouTubeThis podcast is on YouTube!  You can watch full episodes on video by subscribing to the FSF Podcast Channel on YouTube.

Kevin Powell returns to the show where we talk about the business side of his work as a YouTuber and teacher of front-end development and CSS.  Brian and Kevin's conversation was recorded on December 7th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on March 8th, 2024.(00:00) - Building a Courses Business with a YouTube audience with Kevin Powell (03:20) - Kevin's ideal customer journey (05:04) - Using call-to-action cards on YouTube (07:21) - Kevin's channels of revenue (11:09) - Running a Discord community (14:13) - Pricing and course organization (19:22) - Once off vs Memberships (21:23) - Deciding what to create next (23:14) - Kevin's 2024 resolutions Brian's Product StudioMy product studio, Instrumental Products, is where I partner with SaaS companies, creators, and founders to take product ideas from concept to launched.  Got something to ship?  Let's talk!Brian's YouTube channelSubscribe to my YouTube channel where I'm building products and showing the process.Brian's NewsletterSubscribe to my newsletter where I send my best ideas and stories from working on products.This Podcast on YouTubeThis podcast is on YouTube!  You can watch full episodes on video by subscribing to the FSF Podcast Channel on YouTube.

Lianna Patch wasn't thrilled with the work she was doing, who she was doing it for, and the lack of fun she was having as a professional copywriter. So she changed everything and relaunched her Punchline Copy business with a focus on comedic copy. Brian and Lianna's conversation was recorded on  December 13th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on March 8th, 2024.(00:00) - How Lianna Patch Reinvented Her Copywriting Business (03:34) - The evolution of Pubchline copy (08:48) - Lianna's main client base (10:12) - How to be an ideal client (12:49) - How Lianna structures her business (17:30) - Offering productized services (21:31) - ..And larger projects? (22:35) - 2024's roadmap (26:34) - Moving from consulting to "passive" revenue Brian's Product StudioMy product studio, Instrumental Products, is where I partner with SaaS companies, creators, and founders to take product ideas from concept to launched.  Got something to ship?  Let's talk!Brian's YouTube channelSubscribe to my YouTube channel where I'm building products and showing the process.Brian's NewsletterSubscribe to my newsletter where I send my best ideas and stories from working on products.This Podcast on YouTubeThis podcast is on YouTube!  You can watch full episodes on video by subscribing to the FSF Podcast Channel on YouTube.

I invited James Lewis on to help understand the idea of a “fractional product manager” (and we covered that) but it turned into James' story of how we transitioned from that into cofounder of a new SaaS, Lemon, in the payments space.  Brian and James' conversation was recorded on December 8th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on March 8th, 2024.(00:00) - Fractional Product Management to SaaS Cofounder with James Lewis (03:59) - James' current day to day (06:50) - Transitioning from dev to project management (09:56) - The first big move and early learnings (15:36) - Working as a fractional product manager for lemon (17:56) - How James landed the lemon role (20:31) - Dusting off the dev hat (23:34) - What is lemon? (25:24) - ...And how does it work? (28:44) - lemon's current roadmap Brian's Product StudioMy product studio, Instrumental Products, is where I partner with SaaS companies, creators, and founders to take product ideas from concept to launched.  Got something to ship?  Let's talk!Brian's YouTube channelSubscribe to my YouTube channel where I'm building products and showing the process.Brian's NewsletterSubscribe to my newsletter where I send my best ideas and stories from working on products.This Podcast on YouTubeThis podcast is on YouTube!  You can watch full episodes on video by subscribing to the FSF Podcast Channel on YouTube.

Justin Ferriman returns and we discuss his post-exit transition to becoming a business coach for other founders. Brian and Justin's conversation was recorded on November 10th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on March 8th, 2024.(00:00) - From Founder to Coaching Founders with Justin Ferriman (03:12) - Justin's coaching story (04:55) - The Know/Like/Trust list (05:59) - Ideation to execution (07:24) - How Justin is structuring his coaching offerings (14:27) - Keeping room for growth (16:04) - Justin on marketing his coaching business (18:00) - Being active in a community > Hard sell (20:49) - Using quality content to build trust Brian's Product StudioMy product studio, Instrumental Products, is where I partner with SaaS companies, creators, and founders to take product ideas from concept to launched.  Got something to ship?  Let's talk!Brian's YouTube channelSubscribe to my YouTube channel where I'm building products and showing the process.Brian's NewsletterSubscribe to my newsletter where I send my best ideas and stories from working on products.This Podcast on YouTubeThis podcast is on YouTube!  You can watch full episodes on video by subscribing to the FSF Podcast Channel on YouTube.

Sam Selikoff, cofounder of BuildUI joins me for a wide-ranging (and sometimes technical) conversation about his journey as a software engineer, and his business teaching UI development with video courses and YouTube.  Brian and Sam's conversation was recorded on December 15th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on March 8th, 2024.(00:00) - Teaching User Interface Development with Sam Selikoff (BuildUI) (06:33) - Sam's elevator pitch (08:02) - Marketing as front end only (at first)z (11:36) - BuildUI courses and staying up to date (20:03) - BuildUI's UI (...and UX) (23:22) - Sam's time at TED (28:06) - Transition from TED to BuildUI (31:31) - BuildUI origin story (34:41) - Pivoting moments for BuildUI   Brian's Product StudioMy product studio, Instrumental Products, is where I partner with SaaS companies, creators, and founders to take product ideas from concept to launched.  Got something to ship?  Let's talk!Brian's YouTube channelSubscribe to my YouTube channel where I'm building products and showing the process.Brian's NewsletterSubscribe to my newsletter where I send my best ideas and stories from working on products.This Podcast on YouTubeThis podcast is on YouTube!  You can watch full episodes on video by subscribing to the FSF Podcast Channel on YouTube.

Jay Clouse, founder of Creator Science, returns to the show and we have a fun episode where we talk about our lives away from the cameras and mics to talk about how we stay fit and healthy (or at least try to be).  Brian and Jay's conversation was recorded on November 8th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on March 8th, 2024.(00:00) - The Health Pendulum as Entrepreneurs (03:25) - Physical health = mental health (05:28) - Jay's health and fitness "stack" (07:45) - Diet and portion control (10:39) - Morning person/Night troll? Brian's Product StudioMy product studio, Instrumental Products, is where I partner with SaaS companies, creators, and founders to take product ideas from concept to launched.  Got something to ship?  Let's talk!Brian's YouTube channelSubscribe to my YouTube channel where I'm building products and showing the process.Brian's NewsletterSubscribe to my newsletter where I send my best ideas and stories from working on products.This Podcast on YouTubeThis podcast is on YouTube!  You can watch full episodes on video by subscribing to the FSF Podcast Channel on YouTube.

Lianna Patch is known as a fantastic copywriter. Why? Because she's also a comedian! We talk about Lianna's passion for the craft of comedy, her comedic roots, and how she translated that into a thriving career as a copywriter.  Brian and Lianna's conversation was recorded on December 13th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on January 21st, 2024.(00:00) - Geeking out on Comedy with Lianna Patch (04:25) - Lianna's introduction to comedy (07:43) - Niching down in comedy (13:14) - Building a comedy set (16:09) - Dealing with stage fright (and monkey brain "anxiety" ) (19:09) - Lianna's comedic inspiration (20:54) - Combining comedy with copy (23:01) - Lianna's journey to "punchline copy" Full Stack FounderHelping you go full stack to take your own products from idea to design to code to launched.✉️  Get my Full Stack Founder newsletter

I spoke to Kevin Powell, YouTuber and front-end CSS teacher about how he operates his YouTube content business and how he grew to over 800,000 subscribers.  Brian and Kevin's conversation was recorded on December 7th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on January 21st, 2024.(00:00) - Teaching CSS to 800k YouTube Subscribers with Kevin Powell (07:45) - A week in the life of Kevin Powell (10:24) - Kevin's YouTube origin story (11:24) - Who is your target audience? (15:37) - Staying on the cutting edge (17:47) - Content ideation and maintaining a calendar (20:29) - Crafting the perfect video title (23:39) - The YouTube analytics rabbit hole (26:30) - Scripting and planning a video (29:17) - Outsourcing editing and post-production (31:20) - Long form vs short form content (34:00) - YouTube algorithms (or what we know about them) (35:41) - Subcribers to customers! (37:07) - Engaging with the YouTube community (39:59) - Separating content avenues Full Stack FounderHelping you go full stack to take your own products from idea to design to code to launched.✉️  Get my Full Stack Founder newsletter

Aaron Francis, creator of screencasting.com and prolific YouTuber returns to the show to talk all things video, screencasting and growing a business on YouTube.Brian and Aaron's conversation was recorded on November 16th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on January 21st, 2024.(00:00) - YouTube as a business with Aaron Francis (03:41) - Talking video and screencasting.com (05:21) - Growing multiple YouTube channels (08:57) - How many YouTube subscribers is "enough"? (14:04) - YouTube Monetization (19:56) - Imposter Syndrome as a Teacher (22:59) - Hours & commitment in a YouTube business (27:54) - Staying authentic on YouTube Full Stack FounderHelping you go full stack to take your own products from idea to design to code to launched.✉️  Get my Full Stack Founder newsletter

Justin Ferriman, founder of LearnDash, talks to me about how he started, grew, and exited from this WordPress business in the LMS space.  Brian and Justin's conversation was recorded on  November 10th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on January 21st, 2024.(00:00) - From Selling a WordPress Business to SaaS with Justin Ferriman (03:57) - Justin's business transition to coaching (06:45) - Highlights of building a business (08:33) - Taking advantage of untapped markets (12:39) - Using your audience to promote your products (14:46) - Know where your audience hangs out (16:29) - Pricing *gasp* before subscriptions (17:45) - Growing the LearnDash team (19:08) - Biggest challenges growing LearnDash (22:38) - Justin's LearnDash exit (27:29) - After the exit: What next? (33:02) - AI and it's implications on software dev Full Stack FounderHelping you go full stack to take your own products from idea to design to code to launched.✉️  Get my Full Stack Founder newsletter

 Jay Clouse, who runs Creator Science, joins me to talk all things creator businesses.  Brian and Jay's conversation was recorded on November 8th, 2023 Brian's update was recorded on January 21st, 2024.(00:00) - The Science Behind a Creator Business (06:10) - Content as a product (12:38) - Seperating personal and creator brands (19:10) - Creator Science breakdown (29:22) - Creative energy and prioritization (32:31) - Content ideation, production and output (34:36) - Side hustle to full time creator (39:51) - Where to focus your creative energy Full Stack FounderHelping you go full stack to take your own products from idea to design to code to launched.✉️  Get my Full Stack Founder newsletter

Adam Gilbert, founder of My Body Tutor, joins me to talk about how he scaled a personal fitness coaching business.  Brian and Adam's conversation was recorded on November 3rd, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on January 21st, 2024.(00:00) - Scaling a Fitness Coaching Business with Adam Gilbert (04:05) - What is My Body Tutor? (05:09) - The evolution of Adam's business (07:50) - Adam's background in health and fitness (10:50) - Taking the leap and getting those first customers (15:07) - Good businesses solve a problem (16:33) - My Body Tutor today (18:15) - Maintaining core principles in a coaching business (20:03) - My Body Tutor milestones (21:59) - From solo coach to coaching business (24:44) - Practicing routines to turn them into habits (26:13) - Business growing pains (28:08) - Adam's routines (30:09) - My Body Tutor's new plan (31:41) - Catering to a wide range of customers Full Stack FounderHelping you go full stack to take your own products from idea to design to code to launched.✉️  Get my Full Stack Founder newsletter

Elevate your online coaching business with Brian Casel from Clarityflow as he shares valuable tips for online coaching. The post Elevate Your Online Coaching Business with Clarityflow appeared first on LMScast.

Dru Riley, founder of Trends.vc, returns to the show to talk about his life as a digital nomad for 3+ years.Brian and Dru's conversation was recorded on November 20th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on January 21st, 2024.(00:00) - 3+ Years of Nomad Life w/ Dru Riley (03:45) - Where in the world is Dru? (05:53) - Why choose the digital nomad lifestyle? (09:23) - Favorite places (so far)? (10:30) - Working across timezones (14:11) - Processes for life as a nomad (15:44) - Researching upcoming destinations (17:16) - Finding places to stay (19:05) - Social scenes as a digital nomad (20:46) - Challenges of living and working as a nomad Full Stack FounderHelping you go full stack to take your own products from idea to design to code to launched.✉️  Get my Full Stack Founder newsletter

Aaron Francis, creator of screencasting.com and prolific YouTuber joins me to talk about his “Era of Maximum Effort”. We get into building products businesses vs. creator businesses, and more.Brian and Aaron's conversation was recorded on November 16th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on December 8th, 2023.(00:00) - Product vs. Creator Businesses with Aaron Francis (05:16) - Conversations across podcasts (07:49) - Aaron's "era of maximum effort" (13:42) - Focus vs. many "small bets" (19:54) - What are your goals as a creator? (30:04) - The initial business idea really matters (34:06) - How to find a break and relax? Instrumental ProductsHelping you build and ship products & transition a products-based business.✉️  Get my Instrumental Products newsletter

Ian Landsman of HelpSpot joins me to unpack all things Laravel ecosystem.Brian and Ian's conversation was recorded on November 3rd, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on December 8th, 2023. (00:00) - The Laravel Ecosystem with Ian Landsman (05:05) - Ian returns to talk Laravel (08:51) - Laravel vs. Rails (11:22) - Developer ecosystem (13:26) - Upgrading Laravel (15:08) - Front-end frameworks for Laravel (21:28) - Young developers learning on today's tools (24:36) - Tradeoffs (24:54) - Funding open source innovation Instrumental ProductsHelping you build and ship products & transition a products-based business.✉️  Get my Instrumental Products newsletter

Colleen Schnettler, founder of HelloQuery, joins me for a wide-ranging discussion around the question of choosing the right product idea to commit to as an entrepreneur. Brian and Colleen recorded this conversation on November 17th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on December 8th, 2023. (00:00) - Colleen Schnettler (05:33) - Twitter, Conference, and Podcast friends! (07:15) - Transitioning between between ideas (08:00) - Joining TinySeed (08:59) - the ZipMessage to Clarityflow story (as of Nov 2023) (20:26) - Emotional Runway (21:51) - Choosing a product idea (25:38) - Converting a service into a SaaS (30:33) - Riding a wave (34:30) - Evaluating potential ideas (38:04) - Validating ideas before building (45:33) - Audience growth vs. not (49:40) - What are you optimizing for? (55:04) - Survivorship bias (56:42) - Looking back on mistakes (59:03) - Shipping tiny ideas Instrumental ProductsHelping you build and ship products & transition a products-based business.✉️  Get my Instrumental Products newsletter

Dru Riley, founder of Trends.vc joins me to talk about building his Newsletter and Community business and the systems and processes he's used to grow it.Brian and Dru's conversation was recorded on November 20th, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on December 8th, 2023. (00:00) - Systems to run & grow a newsletter business w/ Dru Riley (Trends.vc) (05:48) - Newsletter + Community (08:54) - Breakdown of revenue channels (11:49) - Launching a podcast for Trends.vc (15:45) - Pro membership model (17:54) - Process and delegation (23:01) - Choosing the right topics (26:37) - Marketing funnel Instrumental ProductsHelping you build and ship products & transition a products-based business.✉️  Get my Instrumental Products newsletter

Ian Landsman and his team at Userscape work on HelpSpot, a well-established SaaS product for customer support.  And after well over 10 years in business, they decided to embark on a full rebuild of their app.Brian and Ian's conversation was recorded on November 3rd, 2023.Brian's update was recorded on December 8th, 2023. (00:00) - Rebuilding a SaaS with Ian Landsman (05:19) - Ian returns! (06:10) - Rebuild? Redesign? Relaunch? What is this? (07:07) - Is this a SaaS? (11:08) - Is this the first rebuild? (13:57) - Why rebuild? Why now? (20:20) - AI in customer support tools (25:18) - Killing vs. reworking features (28:37) - Thinking about competitors (31:57) - Roadmap and timeframe (33:05) - Founder designing vs delegating (36:51) - Rolling out the rebuild Instrumental ProductsHelping you build and ship products & transition a products-based business.✉️  Get my Instrumental Products newsletter

Open Threads is returning!This is a quick update where I (Brian Casel) give you a preview of what's to come in the upcoming weekly episodes of Open Threads.  Plus a note on some changes to the format, including an interesting use of "dynamic audio" in Open Threads.  Listen in to hear more.The next full episode will drop on Wednesday, December 13th, followed by new episodes every Wednesday throughout 2024!Talk soon!

SummaryIn this episode, Sean discusses the importance of designing a proper business model for B2B SaaS from the beginning. He dives into the flaws of the freemium model and highlights why a free trial is a superior alternative. With insights from founder Brian Castle, Sean emphasizes the need to avoid giving away too much for free without achieving desirable conversions and profits. For those interested in bootstrapping and maintaining control over their business, he recommends free trials as an effective strategy.Key Points Freemium models often lack a clear path to profitability and rely on a massive user base for monetization. Brian Casel's experience with freemium led him to abandon it in favor of payment and free trial options for his communication tool product. Offering everything for free without seeing conversions can be detrimental to revenue and growth. Freemium models require unlimited time and potentially unlimited funds, making them unsustainable for many businesses. The goal of freemium is to monopolize the market, but this approach is risky without additional funding. For bootstrapped businesses, free trials offer lower exposure and allow costs to be included in customer acquisition expenses. Free trials provide a fixed period or limited capacity for testing product viability and conversion rates. Quotes "With the freemium model, (the promise is) you're gonna get a wave after wave of users... but there's a huge missing piece in the middle." (Sean) "You might be stuck in a situation where you're giving a ton of everything away for free and people are not converting." (Sean) Free Email Course How to Build a Profitable AI-Powered B2B SaaS Business for Less Than $750 - https://nxtstep.io/b2bsaasConnect with Sean Subscribe to my YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@nxtstepsean Connect with me on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-boyce/ Notes generated by Podcast Show Notes  (podcastshownotes.ai)

In this episode, Brian Casel, founder, and CEO of ClarityFlow, discusses the benefits of asynchronous messaging for coaches and the recent rebranding from Zip Message. They also talk about the importance of name changes and pricing strategies for SaaS startups, and ClarityFlow's success with their demo-led approach and upcoming updates, including mobile apps, courses, community spaces, and payments integration. Lastly, Casel emphasizes the value of sales calls for research and development.Brian Casel is a software company owner and founder known for his expertise in software product design and web development. He is the mastermind behind ClarityFlow (formerly ZipMessage), a popular asynchronous messaging tool for professionals in coaching, consulting, and remote teams. With a successful track record of founding and operating businesses like ProcessKit, Audience Ops, and Productize, Brian's vast experience also extends to his roles as a designer, web developer, and podcast host. Here are a few of the topics we'll discuss on this episode of Product Launch: Clarity Flow is growing to include payments for coaches, personalized coaching programs, and community spaces for coaching groups Castle and his team are 100% asynchronous and use tools like Slack and GitHub to collaborate effectively Names can affect the success of a product and the perception of its direction. Customer research, both live and asynchronous, can provide valuable feedback for naming and strategy decisions. Analyzing usage data and creating custom reporting can also help identify a target audience and pricing strategy. Inbound demo requests have become a preferred way for some coaching businesses to evaluate the product The success of a demo-led approach influences product development, marketing materials, and customer success Resources: ClarityFlow NxtStep Podcast Chef Connect with Brian Casel:LinkedInConnect with the host: Sean Boyce on LinkedIn Sean Boyce by Email Quotables: 02:59 – “My team and I, we literally don't have calls live, like live calls. We're a hundred percent asynchronous. And it's weird, it's a little bit weird, but I'm not exaggerating. Like we literally just have, we use Slack and we use GitHub issues and stuff like that when we're working on stuff. But we do have like video meetings where they're seeing my face, they're seeing my screen, I'm seeing their response. We're collaborating together on things, but we're doing it across the world, across time zones and spread out at a time that makes sense” 03:38 – “But we can really still have the same level of collaboration as if we're on a live call together. I actually would even argue that it's better because we have space in between our collaboration. So I could ask something and then my marketing assistant can think about it and do some work and jot down some notes and then get back to me with her thoughts and then I digest that and I get back. So, I really think that communicating asynchronously and having these meetings at like a slower, more spread out pace really, really helps a lot.” 04:41 – “I can't help but think sometimes nowadays when I'm on one-to-one meetings, or even worse if I'm in a group setting at so many meetings and so much time and effort and energy is largely wasted because yeah, only one person could be talking at a time, right? So if you've got a meeting with like 10 people on it or grows even larger than that, just the, the cost to hold that session when most people aren't really doing much. It's asynchronous for the win all day there.” 11:229 – “So if you look at our site now, it's like, yeah, we're still like an async conversation at the core, but we're building into more of a platform to run an entire coaching business. So I got to really understand exactly what they're trying to do, and then that informed all the features that we're rolling out now.” 19:18 –  “I think especially when you start to gain traction with your product, right? Prioritization becomes critically important because if you put the wrong step in front of a step that should have been prioritized. Like you said, you could pause something that's really important for a really, really critical moment, like an inflection point.” Free Email CourseHow to Build a Profitable AI-Powered B2B SaaS Business for Less Than $750Notes generated by Podcast Show Notes  (podcastshownotes.ai)

Brian Casel is a software company owner and founder with a background in software product design and web design. Brian has found, operated, and sold 4 different businesses and is now focused on his company ZipMessage, a tool for swapping video, audio, or text messages with clients and customers asynchronously.Brian started out as a professional designer for the web, offering this as a consultant to a variety of businesses before leveraging these skills to design and build products that power businesses he starts up and operates.Brian also regularly hosts podcasts where he shares notes about his work in the software and design industry, and hosts conversations with friends in this industry. Here are a few of the topics we'll discuss on this episode of Product Launch: The decision process involved in selling a business. How to work on multiple businesses at the same time. The differences between working on multiple businesses compared to a single business. The benefits of working on multiple different businesses. How coaches can automate their workflows. Different approaches to finding a product market fit. How to research your ideal client profile. The problems with real-time meetings. Resources: ZipMessage Bootstrapped Web Audience Ops Restaurant Engine Slack NxtStep Podcast Chef Connecting with Brian Casel:LinkedInConnecting with the host: Sean Boyce on LinkedIn Sean Boyce by Email Quotables 05:02 - “In 2021 I essentially sold 6 different businesses but some of them were tiny just a couple of thousands of dollars, others hundreds of thousands of dollars so that was over the course of 5 or 6 months there I exited everything other than ZipMessage.” 13:08 - “You'll hear a lot of advice out there like yes you have to just focus on a single business and even though that's what I'm doing today I don't necessarily agree that's the right advice for most people in their career especially if you're earlier in your career I think you're actually much better off doing multiple things whether they're small products or service business, plugin products, SaaS products, courses you gain so much experience and just chops when it comes to copywriting, or putting up websites, or talking to customers, or doing sales, these are skills you're going to need no matter what business you settle into.” 14:22 - “I've really enjoyed being able to experience working on multiple things because it enables me to make progress more quickly and figure out the right overlap of passion proficiency demand of what it is I really want to focus on so like you said as you get a little bit older and little bit more experience that stuff starts to become clear and then you can always focus from there but you've got that experience and a lot of these skills are really important in product.” 22:19 - “I do research in a number of different ways and sometimes it's different at different phases of the business and I've launched multiple new businesses over the last 10 years and at the very beginning when it's a brand new business may be in a pre-launch mode before the product is even ready I usually start with a landing page that has an email capture for an early access and after they enter their email it goes straight to a survey with a bunch of detailed questions where I'm asking them to freeform write and after reading every one of those survey responses I usually invite people to interviews based on their responses to the survey and that's usually how I start with early market research for a new potential product.” 27:00 - “There's a bigger benefit to using asynchronous, it's not just that it's more convenient and we can do it across time zones and things like that it's also having space in between our messages gives us that space to prepare notes, I often put a list of talking points on the screen before I hit record, we have the ability to pause and continue, we have the ability to edit a message before sending it back, you can discard it and re-record it if you want to say it a little bit tighter, I'll receive a customers question or some feedback and then I'll go take a walk or maybe respond the next morning so I'm coming back to them with a much higher value response and I'm getting the same back from them.”

Benedicte and Benedikt return to the daily grind after enjoying the conference season. Here's why we had to push back the recording time of this week's episode Getting Things Done – a book by David Allen Listen to Benedikt's conversation with Brian Casel about shipping speed Prune Your Follows After not being able to attend for the past years, Benedikt enjoyed himself at MicroConf Europe: nice weather, meeting their customer support advocate in person, and all the social events between the talks. Now back to work after his week-long birthday leave, Benedikt's trying to figure out how to be smarter with his to-do list. Benedicte's back to the daily grind after her short conference season in November. Aside from working on the readme files for their Cloudinary plugins, they're also doing more work on Prune Your Follows as they prepare for their upcoming Product Hunt launch this December.

"The goal of this podcast is to help business builders learn some best practices when they go looking for their first 10, to expose the things worth doing and the things that might be dead ends and ultimately cost time and money. We should all be recycling these days, and when it comes to understanding your customers and how you talk to them, there's a ton of value that my guests have shared that is worth repeating." – Conor McCarthy.Welcome to the final episode of season 4 of The First 10 Podcast, and what a season it has been! This season, we have heard from an array of inspirational serial entrepreneurs who have created multiple businesses who kindly took the time to openly and honestly share their biggest learnings, challenges and wins with us. Helping business builders is at the heart of this podcast, and valuable golden nuggets of advice come with each new episode. So, to close off this season, we will be doing a re-cap with each of our guests to learn their top tips for someone just starting out and hoping to obtain their first ten customers. So, grab a pen and paper and let this refresher masterclass begin with our entrepreneurial experts Andy Mackin, Jakob Greenfeld, Shane Melaugh, Daniel Vassallo, Rob Walling, Dave Parker, Brian Casel, Brennan Dunn and Corey Haines.Connect with the First 10 season 4 guests: Andy Mackin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mackinconsultancy Jakob Greenfeld: https://jakobgreenfeld.com/ Shane Melaugh: https://ikario.com/about/ Daniel Vassallo: https://dvassallo.com/ Rob Walling: https://robwalling.com/ Dave Parker: https://www.dkparker.com/  Brian Casel: https://briancasel.com/  Brennan Dunn: https://rightmessage.com/  Corey Haines: https://www.swipefiles.com/ Nick Loper: https://SideHustleNation.comConnect with First 10 Podcast host Conor McCarthy: https://www.first10podcast.comhttps://www.conormccarthy.me/work-with-me https://twitter.com/TheFirst10Podhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/comccart/Check out my podcast partners!Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1389931Otter: https://otter.ai/referrals/ETRNKY16Calendly: https://calendly.grsm.io/ilev18qxpn1eThis podcast was produced in partnership with podlad.com

"two things that have kind of remained constant are snowboarding and music. And I mean, I like different types of music and my snowboarding has changed, but those are the two things I've always been into that stayed the same." - Justin JacksonWatch this episode on YouTubeJustin Jackson:Justin's company, TransistorJustin on Twitter:  @mijustinBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessageZipMessage (today's sponsor) is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.Quotes from this episode:Quote 01:Brain Casel: The price of being into snowboarding or skiing these days is just insane.Justin Jackson: Yeah.Brain Casel: I mean, and that like it it's been insane for a number of years now. But then once you have kids, I mean, I've got a six and an eight-year-old who have been taking lessons for the last like three seasons. So you've got, like, rentals and lessons for them. And then, you know, four lift tickets, I mean, we go to a crappy hill in the, in the Northeast for one day plus the hotel room, plus driving there.I mean, that's like $1,000 weekend at least, you know. Yeah, it's crazy.Justin Jackson: It's pricey and it's always been expensive. But I think a family pass at our hill probably costs three or $4,000 a year I think. Mhm. And I've just gotten a family passes every year, even as my kids have gotten older and not been as into it. When we moved here my dream is like they're all going to be pro skiers and snowboarders that they're going to love it so much and you know, they all learn to ski and you know, they, they like it enough to do it a couple of times a year or whatever but. Yeah, especially my older too. They're definitely not as into it as me, but you know, that's cool too. I, it's still one thing that's interesting to me is there's not a lot that's the same from when I was in high school with me, but two things that have kind of remained constant are snowboarding and music and I mean, I like different types of music and my snowboarding has changed, but those are the two things I've always been into that stayed the same. And I, I just think it's so fun to be able to enjoy something for so long and have it evolve as I've gotten older.Brain Casel: It's really great, it is a great thing to be into as a, as like a fun sport hobby and like for me, I probably you and everyone else who does it is I love that it's so seasonal. Like, like I'm already like so like I can't wait for the snow to get here. And get into another season.And the thing that I love about it now is being an adult and a business owner is it's one of the few things that really takes me out of the way it makes me present.Justin Jackson: You know? Yeah.Brain Casel: Like being, you know, going down the mountain on a snowboard like you have to be present, otherwise you hit a tree or something, right? So like, that's one of the things that, like, for me is like a forcing function to like, it's, it's relaxing it's active, but it's it relaxes my mind.Justin Jackson: Yeah.Quote 02:Justin Jackson: That was like my kind of introduction to the industry. Yeah, they're still around "allofskateboards.com" and by this point, his whole story was so interesting because, you know, he was this a really good snowboarder. And then had these injuries and had to pivot. And then he started making these snowboards. And because he was a snowboarder, he and he was also just kind of engineering-minded.He knew how he wanted to build these and shape them. And so he was doing all of this by himself. And then it got popular in Japan. So he started building all these boards for Japan and was doing great. But then there were so many orders that he had to hire somebody, and they really messed up in order.And it almost bankrupted him as a company, And so I was the first person he'd hired since then. And he's kind of like he's just a really unique guy. Like he's kind of grumpy and just doesn't like working with people. And so I had to really prove myself. I wanted to work in the office like I wanted to do business stuff like sales and marketing and, you know, all that stuff. But he was like, No, you got to start working in the shop and I'm terrible. What year is this? This is 1999 or 2000. I'm 19 or 20 at the time and he gets me working in the shop and at this point, we're mostly, I mean.Brian Casel: 1999 I mean snowboarding is already pretty big at that point. Like it's snowboarding a big deal by that point and like all that. Justin Jackson: Yeah, snowboarding was at that point you know, the first wave had already happened for sure. And that was probably actually peak snowboarding. I think my generation was peak snowboarding from 95 to 2005. Yeah. It's probably the best that's around the time, but we're.Brian Casel: Probably around the same age and I yeah, I picked it up in.Justin Jackson: Like high school and into college and yeah, I mean, it's hard to explain to people now, but snowboarding was a cultural phenomenon, like every kid had a snowboarding poster on their wall, whether they snowboard it or not. It was like every kid was buying Snowboarder magazine whether they were snowboarding or not.Quote 03:Justin Jackson: I teamed up with initially it was like I was working a full-time job, and so we hired my brother to manage it. My younger brother and I were probably 21 at the time. And then my friend Adrian was a skateboarder and I started my first business ever really was in grade 12 with him. We'd put on a rave together and actually done really well.Brian Casel: And so another cultural force of the nineties.Justin Jackson: Yeah, another cultural force in the nineties. And so it just seemed like this would be a great agent. And I, you know, he's a skateboarder I'm a snowboarder. I'd worked in the industry and it was, it just felt like this is going to be a great combination.Brian Casel: And like location-wise, you want to do it in your hometown.Justin Jackson: And we want to do it in our hometown, which is probably a mistake because this was.Brian Casel: The area that that's like not that close to big mountains.Justin Jackson: Yeah. It's we're like, yes, Stoney plain in Spruce Grove or these bedroom communities but that's still a lot.Brian Casel: I mean, like even growing like I grew up in Long Island, New York. And then even up here in Connecticut, like there's plenty of snowboard and ski shops in the suburbs for these families who buy stuff. Yeah. So take road trips, right?Justin Jackson: I think the problem was that Edmonton was still close enough. It was 30 minutes away It was a city of 1.2 million people at the time, probably. And I, I mean, I've written quite a bit about the real deal. The shop was called The Real Deal. I've written quite a bit about, you know, the mistakes we made. And I think one is just ignored brings people's natural momentum.So if you're, if you're a teenager in Stony Plain, Spruce Grove on the weekends, if you're going to go shopping, you want to go to the big city, you want to go to Edmonton because it's exciting, right? It's, it's that you can hit a bunch of stores. You can go out to eat, you can cruise White Avenue and, you know, all the cool strips in Edmonton.And we just ignored that. And that natural momentum and thought that people would care about like ideology, like, like shop local. But people actually don't give a shit about that stuff, you know what I mean?

“It's exactly the problem you just said, it's like, we put effort into it. We tried to make it good, but we were doing what we wanted. We haven't given anyone anything they wanted" - Tyler KingWatch this episode on YouTubeTyler King:Tyler's company, Less Annoying CRMTyler on Twitter: @TylerMKingBrian Casel:Brian's company, ZipMessageBrian on Twitter: @casjamThanks to ZipMessageZipMessage (today's sponsor) is the video messaging tool that replaces live calls with asynchronous conversations.  Use it free or tune into the episode for an exclusive coupon for Open Threads listeners.Quotes from this episode:Quote 01:Brian Casel: When it comes to hiring people to work on marketing stuff. What's been your approach to that? Like, are were you or are you ever like like you're going to be hands-on in it or I'm going to hire like a head of marketing to figure it out and run with it or outsource to an agency. What are your thoughts on this?Tyler King: That kind of. Yeah, I'm happy to share. But let me preface this by saying, like, I'm this is my greatest weakness or like the thing that we've probably done worse the like just a terrible job in the early days. Like, For I did most of the marketing for a long time myself. My brother, who's the other co-founder, did some as well. We kind of like. So one of my weaknesses is outsourcing. I'm just like terrible at quick transactional relationships. So I've basically never effectively hired anyone that's not a full-time employee, which is I think, the opposite of most people in our space. The good side of this is like I think we've got a really good culture and all this, but the bad side is like it's not. I've never been in a situation where it's like, Oh, we need some quick copywriting. Let me pay someone for $20 to do some copyright I just would do it myself and I'm okay at it. But I'm not an expert on any of this stuff. We didn't have a real marketing person until two years ago.Brian Casel: So like, no, the person who was working on any sort of marketing.Tyler King: I mean, me, me. And then so our customer, the biggest team of the company is CRM coaches. Which is basically customer service. They get 20% time, so one day a week they can do other stuff. So we've had a lot of CRM coaches like enjoying writing is a common characteristic of people who like customer service. So a lot of them have chosen to write help articles, write blog posts, to create content like that, but not necessarily.Brian Casel: that model of content marketing essentially. Right. Like having your, your, your subject matter experts, you know?Tyler King: Yeah.Brian Casel: Some kind of.Tyler King: The problem is we're not subject matter experts like, you know, close the CRM where that's "stellies". Yeah. So "stellies" is like this Uber sales guy, right? He knows everything about sales. And that's why CRM"s are consumed by salespeople. I look at his content, and I'm like, wow, I wish anyone at LessAnnoyingCRM had that kind of understanding of how like we have no salespeople, none of us have ever done sales before. We're selling to salespeople. We're experts on how to build software and how to provide customer service, which is not what our customers want to know.Brian Casel: Hmm.Tyler King: So I agree with you. That would be a great model, but this is one of our great struggles, is the thing like we can write interesting content, but it is interesting to people who would never use LessAnnoyingCRM.Quote 02:Tyler King: I feel like most marketing attempts in my experience have failed, like, at the end of the day, you could look back on it and it's exactly the problem you just said. It's like we put effort into it. We try to make it good, but we were doing what we wanted. We weren't giving anyone anything they wanted.And it really sucks when you have to market your marketing, like you make an e-book and then you're like, Okay, now I have to okay. How does anyone hear about this e-book? And it's like, if they're not already looking for it, like, this is just in Jackson Hole thing about like writing an existing wave, right? You're putting something out there even if it's good.But if nobody wants it now, you've got a second marketing challenge of getting people to the top of your main marketing funnel.Quote 03:Brian Casel: You're over ten years in now in this business.  Tyler King: Mm hmm. Mm-hmm.  Brian Casel: We talked about how you have the "LessAnnoyingCRM" brands. Well, like, have you thought about just firing up a new product?Tyler King: Yes, we have had a few misadventures in this in the past.Brian Casel: Like, less annoying invoicing and less annoying Yeah.Tyler King: So our name as a company is actually "LessAnnoying Software LLC" because this has been kind of the idea. Like, no one grows up and dreams of starting a CRM company. Like, it's a pretty boring thing to make. But the idea was like, let's, like, what is the core thing that everything else would build off of? And so, yeah, that has been the plan. And we've every once in a while, we start going down that path. And then coincidentally, the main business, like, starts doing better And we're like, it's hard to justify putting resources into this side thing when, you know, you could put the same resources into like you've just got a lot more leverage focusing, I think. But I'm conflicted about that.Brian Casel: One argument to make for it, I think, is that you already have a huge customer base and an even larger audience like an email list. Right. Or at least people who have tried it in the past maybe didn't fully convert. But then you still have all these paying customers. Right. So you instantly have an audience to, you know, like like whatever new product you launch, as long as it's in the same set of needs, you know, you can instantly launch two over 10k MMR, right?Tyler King: Like yeah, I think you're absolute.Brian Casel: Right of launching it, you know, and that like you're at a huge head start against every other new SaaS startup, you know.Tyler King: Yeah. So how do you decide whether to build it as a new product versus build it into the existing one? Is one question. I've struggled with What you're saying makes absolute sense from like our revenue. Like, if we build it into our existing product and it's like providing value to people and it gets a lot of usages, but you don't make any money off of it.Brian Casel: Yeah, sort of depends on what kind of product it is, I would think. Yeah, the breakdown there would be it goes in and we're about to build a bunch of new features, which maybe should be their own product, but I don't, I don't know it, but the breakdown I would think is like if it's still in CRM land, but just bigger, more powerful CRM land or maybe like a super automated CRM, like that, 's like a new, more expensive plan on the existing product. But if it's an adjacent product, that some customers might find valuable and useful and other customers might not be interested at all, you know, then spin off a separate product. But I really do think that, like, you also have the branding advantage to like, you know, you could literally call your line of products like less annoying this, less annoying that, you know.Tyler King: Yeah, I think it's a good idea.

Brian Casel of ZipMessage shares insights into how you can increase your ability to communicate effectively online... The post How to Increase Your Ability to Communicate Effectively Online with Brian Casel of ZipMessage appeared first on LMScast - LifterLMS Podcast.

Pilar talks to Brian Casel about asynchronous communication and how he uses his product, Zip Message in the day to day running of his business. Links: You can communicate asynchronously with Brian through his Zip Message page: https://zipmessage.com/brian And you can find him on Twitter too https://twitter.com/CasJam  https://briancasel.com/podcasts For more show notes, check out https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/asynchronous-video 

This week, joining the podcast is special guest, serial entrepreneur, and the king of shiny objects, Brian Casel. Brian is the founder of Zip Message, a popular video messaging tool for async conversations, which launched at the beginning of 2021. Brian recently sold and exited some of his earlier businesses, including Audience Ops and ProcessKit. Brian firmly believes that with each business opportunity came great learnings and experiences, which he has carried forward to get him to where he is today. Get ready to dive into an episode filled with fascinating insights and advice as Brian brings us on his journey from freelancing to fearlessly launching and running multiple businesses. In this episode, Brian offers brilliant advice for business start-ups as he openly shares how to talk to your customers, tactics on building an audience, how to master sales calls and how to approach the awkward conversation of pricing. Key points throughout the discussion include: The leap from freelancing to building businesses.The joy of obtaining your first customer. Building an audience through networking. Mastering sales: how to get the most out of sales calls.Customer observation: learning from customer pain points. Curiosity is key: questions to ask your customers. Attracting your ideal customer base. Increasing brand awareness and speaking directly with potential customers. The benefits of asynchronous communication. How to discuss pricing with potential clients. Assessing and filtering through business ideas. Book recommendations for business builders. Brian's advice for obtaining your first 10 customers.  ‘'I went through this long list of businesses. I would never have landed on Zip Message if I didn't learn things from Process Kit. I never would have landed on Process Kit if I didn't learn a ton from Audience Ops and Audience Ops came from what I learned from Restaurant Engine. I wouldn't have landed on those ideas unless I had gone through that experience.'' – Brian Casel. Connect with Brian Casel:https://briancasel.com/ https://briancasel.com/podcasts https://www.linkedin.com/in/briancasel/ https://twitter.com/CasJam https://zipmessage.com/   Connect with First 10 Podcast host Conor McCarthy: https://www.first10podcast.comhttps://twitter.com/TheFirst10Podhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/comccart/ Resources:Book: The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick.  http://momtestbook.com/  Book: The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen.https://www.coldstart.com/ Podcast partnersBuzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1389931Otter: https://otter.ai/referrals/ETRNKY16Calendly: https://calendly.grsm.io/ilev18qxpn1eProduced in partnership with podlad.com

Episode Resources:Flippa - Buy and Sell Online Marketplaces, Apps and WebsitesFE International - Professional M&A AdvisorMicroaquire - Startup Acquisition MarketplaceConnect with Brian:Twitter: https://twitter.com/CasJamPodcast: Bootstrapped Web Company: https://zipmessage.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briancasel Connect with Brett:Email: BT@BrettTrainor.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bretttrainor/YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCySoKsETeKxu-Fnf2VfE7GgFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TrainorBrettTwitter: https://twitter.com/Brett_TrainorInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/bretttrainor/Connect with Diana:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianamitchell716/

Brian Casel comes by and we talk about his latest product zipmessage.com - how it's grown, what he's doing for marketing, becoming a backend developer himself, podcasting, and more!Links!CasJam (Twitter)ZipMessageOpen Threads (Brian's new podcast)Chipper CIChris Fidao (Twitter)

This is Open Threads, a podcast by Brian Casel featuring conversations with founder friends about life in entrepreneurship.  This trailer tells you what the show's all about, what I'm planning for it, and a little bit about me.

I talk with Brian Casel, founder of ZipMessage, an asynchronous video messaging tool.Brian has created several successful products in the past, and sometimes ran them in parallel. But he recently sold his entire portfolio of products to focus on ZipMessage. Brian explains why he made this decision.  He also talks about why sometimes you need to shut something down, even if it does seem to be kind of, sort of working.And we talk about the feeling when you realise that a new product is really getting traction.Links:zipmessage.comBrian's podcast, Bootstrapped WebBrian on Twitter  

How can asynchronous conversations help us achieve work goals? Our guest today is Brian Casel, founder of ZipMessage. You'll learn why async is so important for remote workers, how it can improve your hiring process, where realtime calls still work better, and more.Download the MP3 audio file: right-click here and choose Save As.Podcast feed: subscribe to https://feeds.simplecast.com/4MvgQ73R in your favorite podcast app, and follow us on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Podcasts.Show NotesZipMessage — Brian's product, a tool for asynchronous communicationAudience Ops, ProcessKit — Brian's previous productsUI Breakfast Podcast. Episode 85: Validating Your SaaS Product with Brian Casel2021, a 'shake-up' yearHow Stripe Manages Remote & Hybrid Work and CultureBasecamp, Tailwind CSS, Userlist, SavvyCal — several product inspirations for BrianUI Breakfast Podcast. Episode 154: Refactoring UI with Adam Wathan and Steve SchogerSend Brian a ZipMessageFollow Brian on TwitterBootstrapped Web — Brian's podcast with Jordan GalOpen Threads — Brian's personal podcastToday's SponsorThis show is brought to you by Userlist — the best tool for sending onboarding emails and segmenting your SaaS users. To follow the best practices, download our free printable email planning worksheets at userlist.com/worksheets.Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here.Leave a ReviewReviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes. Here's how.

I sit down with Brian to talk about his new product ZipMessage, picking fights with the Goliath, Saas lessons from his journey, marketing, selling, business operations...

It took me a while to draw out what I wanted to say in today's monologue about our guest. This will be his 6th appearance on the show. With this episode, we've covered 4 different SaaS based businesses, with a handful of digital products and one service-based business that's still running, of which, I've never fully interviewed him about. I really should since it's the cashflow center he has to fund all of these business experiments he's chasing. His name is Brian Casel and he's trying something new, it's called ZipMessage. It's an asynch way to share videos with customers & colleagues. Out of everything he's worked on, I think this will be the software project that defines his career in the software business. Just like I called it with Paul Jarvis and Fathom Analytics taking over his product world, I bet we'll have Brian back on for a 7th time when he sells his company to Microsoft. Enjoy today's episode! https://youtu.be/MLK9qQjRLSo Transcript [00:01:39] Matt: [00:01:39] It took me a while to draw out what I wanted to say in today's monologue about our guests. This will be a six appearance on the show. With this episode, we've covered four different SAS based businesses with a handful of digital products and one service-based business. That's still running of which I've never really fully interviewed them about. I really should. Since it's the cashflow center, he has [00:02:00] to fund all of these business experiments. He's chasing.[00:02:03] Can you guess who it is? His name is Brian Casel. He's trying something new. It's called zip message. It's an async way to share videos with customers and colleagues. Out of everything he's worked on. I think this will be the software project that defines his career in the software business.[00:02:19]Just like I called it with Paul Jarvis and fathom analytics taking over his product world. I bet we'll have Brian back on for a seventh time when he sells this business to Microsoft. You're listening to the Maryport a podcast for the resilient digital business builders. Subscribe to the newsletter@mattreport.com slash subscribe and follow the podcast on apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Better yet. Please share this episode on your social media. We'd love more listeners around here. Okay.[00:02:46] Let's talk to Brian and find out why he's launching yet another product. Hey everybody. Welcome back to what I'm calling the Brian report. Brian. Oh man. Welcome back to the podcast. You've [00:03:00] clearly won the, a amount of recurring times on the, on the merit port show. I should just have applied for all of the products that you launch. I should just have a podcast all to yourself and everything that you have going on today.[00:03:12] We're talking about. If that's[00:03:13] Brian: [00:03:13] not a sign of failure, I don't know.[00:03:15] Matt: [00:03:15] What is failure show castles here to talk about what might be another failure, the message you can find zip message@zipmessage.com. I'm going to open this up. I think a lot of people know your backstory. If they haven't, they can listen to the half a dozen shows that you and I have already done on this podcast.[00:03:33]Why this product last time we. We chatted. You were just getting your, you were, you were getting that sort of Ruby on rails, getting your chops down on that, like learning how to build whole other platform and suddenly zip message appeared out of nowhere. How, why, when did it come about, why did you pursue it?[00:03:51] Brian: [00:03:51] Yeah. I don't, I don't remember exactly when our last show here on a I'll call it Matt report aired. It must've been [00:04:00] probably around 2018 or 2019. I can't believe it's actually been that long, but you and I have chatted since then. The, so a little bit of of the timeline process kit, which is, you know, I still run and still going that product.[00:04:15] I basically started working on it really full-time in January of 2019, I kind of started planning it in 18, but really got full-time into it in January 19. Launched that to first paying customers by around June of, I want to say, yeah, 2019, and then really focused a hundred percent on that. Throughout 19 and 20 and into 20.[00:04:40] And then at the end of 2020 you know, process kit just got to the, to that place where a lot of SAS get to where, you know, a couple thousand in MRR it's really slow to grow. It has some. You know, so some, some challenges I tried a bunch of stuff and I'm still trying some stuff, but I decided at, [00:05:00] in around December of 2020 to just take a step back and start to open my mind to like, maybe I should try another product or two or three.[00:05:12] And actually like back in, back in, you know, back in January, the idea was. Let's let's throw a couple of ideas at the wall and see what sticks, but there was really this one idea called zip message, which I had the idea and midway through 2020, but I, you know, I shelved it along with all the other shiny object ideas in my long list of them.[00:05:29]But I was like, let me just try this. Take a little breather from, from really pushing on process kit, put it, put the roadmap on process could a little bit on, on maintenance mode. And and I went into zip message and, you know, I really liked the idea. I was attracted to the idea because a number of different things.[00:05:46]First of all, you know, in, in a lot of ways, it's sort of really every business that I ever get into, I'm trying to course correct from something that I learned in the, in the previous one. Right. One of the big challenges with process kit [00:06:00] has been that it's a really big. Product, which means it's a really big task to adopt.[00:06:05] If you're a new customer, like it literally takes new customers a good month, at least of. Of like everyday work on their part to, to[00:06:13] Matt: [00:06:13] really, they have to appeal the process out, template it out into your system, if you will, and then engage people to, to use it. And I remember you and I chatting a lot PR you know, privately between the two of us, like, wouldn't this be a great idea, like free templates to like kickstart that and nurture.[00:06:30] Yeah.[00:06:30] Brian: [00:06:30] And, and we have templates in there which really did help a lot in, in late 20, 20. Added the templates and put them like front and center in the onboarding experience. So actually since then we've had, you know, more customers, self convert without, without the heavy customer support load that it did have for a while there.[00:06:45]And that, that continues, I guess it's just super slow, you know, to, to grow and, and become a thing. And for those that don't know, like in the background, I also have audience ops, which I'm not super involved in day to day, but that, that is the other business that I have that, that sort of.[00:07:00] [00:06:59] Funds all the runway for, for getting into SAS. So it gives me a little bit of space and time to be able to explore different ideas which is, which is really nice. But with zip messaging, I really liked it because the first things that really attracted to me as the business idea is that it's so fast to get value from, you know, like again, process kit is like, you got to really commit like a good month to get, to really start to get value.[00:07:23] Like you're automating operations in your business. Whereas with zip message. You could sign up and have an, an asynchronous video call with one of the person and you just got. A bit of value from this tool. Is that something[00:07:36] Matt: [00:07:36] you, you sort of stumbled upon? I know countless products, services and stuff that you've, that you've gone through.[00:07:42] And I, and I want to kind of break that down of like what your best, most valuable lesson is thus far in your career, but will you like sort of. You know, midway through or three quarters way through here with process get going. You know what I think I missed, I think it was that I think it was that quick, easy, instant gratification to a [00:08:00] customer.[00:08:00] I feel like that's what I'm missing and, oh, that's right. I get this thing called zip message over here that I was thinking about doing[00:08:07] Brian: [00:08:07] learned. It it's, it's never just one thing. There's always, you know, there's, there's really probably like 10 big learnings that I've taken out of process kit. And some things that I, that I learned.[00:08:17] That, that we did really well, but yeah, that was one of them definitely is that activation adoption sort of thing. The most common , churn reason that I hear from people is you know, really it's so more of a challenge of, of getting new people to adopt it. Cause cause once people do do get like sign on the, the lifetime is really great and they actually do expand that they add, you know, team members and stuff like that.[00:08:41]But they, they basically stopped like the people who turn, they, they basically stop using it after a few months. So, you know, obviously there there's. There might be some like product market fit issues there, but there is a core customer base that is like power users on it and they really love it.[00:08:55] So it's sort of like a question of like, what do I do with that?[00:08:59]Matt: [00:08:59] This is a [00:09:00] reaction to just like, it's not even just whatever audio video tools to do apps and like all these other spaces. This is just everything. Every product in the world competing with that I need to, it needs to be instant or the customer.[00:09:15] They're out. Like it doesn't matter what kind of tool you're launching[00:09:17] Brian: [00:09:17] here. Yeah. The thing that I saw with zip message that, that got me really excited. Number one, was that like speed to get getting value from the tool. Number two is it's, it's heading into a space of software tools. That is, is not brand new.[00:09:33] So like loom is probably the most common call it competitor. And, and which, you know, lots of people use, I use loom as well. And so this idea of like video recording, video messaging tools, the thing that I saw with loom, and this was actually the, the way the idea for zip message came about was that I would commonly be on a customer support call for process kit, and ask the customer, Hey, I [00:10:00] need to see what you're seeing.[00:10:00] Can you record your screen for me? Can you, can you go use a tool like, like loom or, or record your screen and send me a Dropbox link or whatever you might do. And, you know, that's a lot to ask for, for customers. Like maybe they do use loom, maybe they don't. But it's just friction there. Right? So I wanted to, like, I, I started thinking like, man, there's gotta be an easy way for me to just send somebody a link.[00:10:22] They click it, they come to a page, they could start recording their screen. And that was the original idea for zip message. And that's what it is. You can, you can do that, but, but what it quickly evolved into was okay, they could re it's easy for somebody else to record, but I can record my response right back to them.[00:10:42] And now we have this asynchronous conversation on, on video or just audio camera, screen screenshot, or just text. And now is literally flowing down the page, like a conversation. But we're asynchronous. We don't have to book a live zoom call, you know? I don't have to [00:11:00] ask somebody to get on their calendar, all that.[00:11:02] It's just like, here's a link. Let's talk when it's good for both of us. And, and it just flows right down the page. And, and that idea of the asynchronous conversation turned out to be the thing that people are starting to really latch on to, you know, because. And that was a little bit to my surprise, you know?[00:11:20]And, and I'm finding all these other use cases. My original use case was like customer support scenarios, but. All these other use cases are coming up like, oh, I want to, I want to use it to, to take requests for my podcast. I wanna, I want to use it to, you know, collaborate with my team, my freelancers, talk to my customers, or use it in a sales situation to have asynchronous video chats with, with sales prospects, hiring, like getting, you know, video responses from applicants and stuff like that.[00:11:49] So, I'm sort of fielding all these different use cases right now, but it's, they're all interested in, I, I keep asking people, like, why are you interested in zit message? Why, why don't you just use a loom? [00:12:00] Right. And, and they all come back saying, this is the one that has that, that conversation, like a threaded conversation view.[00:12:08] And so we're really sort of leaning into that. And I'm pretty excited about it. I I've been. Ha having conversations with, with customers like using zip message. It's a[00:12:18] Matt: [00:12:18] really cool[00:12:19] Brian: [00:12:19] tool. Totally. It's a really cool way to actually communicate,[00:12:23] Matt: [00:12:23] you know? Yeah. Before we keep drilling into the product and how you're approaching it, , what has been the most valuable piece of education to Excel your career?[00:12:33] I'm going to bet that it's learning how to. Amy, you always know, you've always known how to develop, but I feel like this progression into learning Ruby on rails and becoming a a better developer has been something that has really skyrocketed your ability to launch and iterate and feel more confident in products.[00:12:52] Is that, is that true?[00:12:53] Brian: [00:12:53] A hundred percent. Yes. Yeah. I love it. And it has skyrocketed my enjoyment of what I do [00:13:00] with, with products. Yeah, it has really, really removed such a huge barrier. Cause I've, I, I have been a front end dev my whole career. I've been a designer. I am a designer.[00:13:11]And, and when I say designer, I, you know, as, as any designer knows that that doesn't mean. Picking colors and picking typography. Like that's just one detail of it. What you're really doing is as a designer, you're solving a problem. And so when you're designing for the web, especially if you're designing software, you're really designing the whole system from the way that it works.[00:13:34] In the database to the way that the user interacts on the, on the screen. And for years, I, you know, probably one of your mat reports, we talked about like ops calendar when I was doing that. And that was 2017. Yeah. Back then I couldn't develop backend. So I had to hire out. Help with that. Right now, I, I also have a developer that I work with them and we can work really fast together.[00:13:57] Another big benefit of being a developer myself [00:14:00] is I can collaborate on such a deeper, more productive level with him. He's in India and we, and we are hashing out every single feature together. Not to mention working You know, like two tracks, like we're, we're able to ship twice as many features in a week because it's both me and him working on it.[00:14:20] Yeah.[00:14:20] Matt: [00:14:20] So, I I'd say also one of your super powers, it's kind of funny. Not to get sidetracked on, on products. I'm looking at our 2017 episode on the Maryport building ops calendar. And one of the channel under the challenges bullet point section there's here's a bullet point. It says there's a side plugin business that is also being created from custom tools by audience, which I think was like your opt-in forms on WordPress, the content upgrades.[00:14:44] Yeah, it just goes to show like all of these different things that you would fragment and spider out too.[00:14:49] Brian: [00:14:49] That one was funny because we had that's a pair of, of WordPress plugins. And we, you know, some, some customers bought it, but we mainly used it for clients and audience ops. And then I think it was [00:15:00] around 2018.[00:15:00] I ended up selling those to liquid web. Which came about really randomly, but but it was nice to sort of just[00:15:07] Matt: [00:15:07] let those go. I'd say also one of, one of your super powers, which might often get overlooked is your ability. And this is just something that I've admired your ability to do. And I just don't know if I have the patience like you to do it, but as hiring people is higher as being able to find and hire and train people up to.[00:15:25]To help you develop these, these products. I think that's a skill set that is very difficult to hone over time. I've seen plenty of blog posts that are like, here's all you have to do, make a couple of test projects and hire and go through 12 of them and hire that one person. It's like, it never works for me.[00:15:41] Works for you. You[00:15:42] Brian: [00:15:42] know what? It's interesting you say that because I think, I think I've done okay with hiring over the years. In, in, in certain types of hiring, but, but now I'm in a different place with trying to build a small team to grow this SAS company that I'm working on [00:16:00] now. Right. So, and, and that I'm finding a lot more challenging to hire for.[00:16:04]I'm still figuring it out. I like, it's literally on my plate this week, like a problem that I haven't figured out yet. So, the what, what I've always felt pretty comfortable with is. Okay. I've got a service. I figured it, the process for delivering the service. I've documented the process. I set up the systems.[00:16:23] Now I need to hire people to plug into the process. And carry out specific roles. That's that's what audience ops is. We've got a team of about 25 people, writers, copy editors managers, assistants, and they, they just kind of carry out their tasks. And that has grown to where we have like a, a higher level manager.[00:16:41] We've got a sales person, we've got, you know, different stuff. So you know, that, that. I think, I think I'm an okay manager. Maybe not a great manager. I don't know that. I'm great. Yeah. Yeah. Like building a a strong team culture something I w I always want to try and get better at, but, but my team there is, has [00:17:00] been with me for many of them four or five, six years, you know?[00:17:03]Yeah. And, and that's gone, that's gone pretty good. And developers I've, I've had generally pretty good success with sometimes it's initially hard to, to find the right person who has the right skillset, but being technical now makes it so much easier, frankly. I haven't done it that much because I've just been working with this one developer.[00:17:19] Who's been awesome.[00:17:21] Matt: [00:17:21] One of the challenges for me. When I'm looking to, to work with a developer especially in the past is I feel like I should be finding somebody who just cares as much. About the product and like the vision and the future as I do about like, whatever product that was, or is that I was working on, that was a lesson that I learned really early.[00:17:42] Like, man, you got to just pump the brakes on that. A lot of people just want the task, want to get it done and do a good job, but they're not going to care about the long-term vision of where you want to go. Is that something that you wrestle with at[00:17:54] Brian: [00:17:54] all? With developers. We were just talking about how I'm, I'm still relatively new to learning how to build and Ruby [00:18:00] on rails, like backend development.[00:18:02]I am still in a newbie. I could technically build an app, but the code will be ugly that like, I don't have all the experience that that an experienced dev has. So. So it's actually nice to be able to work with somebody who's really strong career experienced backend developer. Like I, I I defer to him too.[00:18:21] Like we have, we actually have a lot of issues in our get hub where I built and finished a feature. It's all done. It's working tested. Good to go. And then, and then I just pass it over to him. Just, just go clean up, whatever. I just built here, like, you know, fix it, fix all the mistakes, like and keep it work in the same basically.[00:18:40]And then I get to learn from, from what he did and and so that that's been really good. So mostly I'm just sort of deferring on the technical side to him, but I'm D I'm directing him and managing like w what we're going to work on, how the is going to design, how, how it's going to function, all that kind of stuff.[00:18:56] Matt: [00:18:56] And one of the challenging roles, I think we can talk about it because I saw you [00:19:00] tweet about it is trying to find somebody to be like that. Content creator, video podcasts, blogging tutorials. Front-facing it's quite a unicorn. If I pat myself on the back here, because it's something that I do for Craig at Casos it's been a challenging, I don't know how long it's been, but it's been a challenging proposition for you.[00:19:21] How's[00:19:22] Brian: [00:19:22] that? Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. I did. Want to talk about that. Cause it's something that I'm looking for right now. Just generally hiring marketers in general. Right? Most marketers are really good at what they do. But I think these days when it comes to marketing, excuse me, that's why I shouldn't drink coffee while I'm in the tunnel pockets.[00:19:45]Like most marketers. Who, who, who call themselves either a freelance marketer or a full-time marketer. Yeah. Hold on. Right. You know, most marketers are, are good at what they [00:20:00] technically at what they do, whether it's writing or or using analytics or SEO, research, outreach, whatever, whatever type of marketing they do.[00:20:11] It's usually a mix of things. They're technically good at that. But right now in 2020 or 2021, B2B SAS is. Just a really, really difficult from a marketing standpoint. And I'm mainly talking about like new entry, SAS products, very early stage SAS products like mine. Right. It's just the, the competition is just insane.[00:20:36] You know, it's one thing to S to S to market and sell a service, you know, because you, you just need a handful of good customers. To, to make it a really viable business, but, but for a SAS product to break through, like really no matter how you price it, even, even if you're pricing several hundred, a customer, even up to like a thousand or two per, per customer per month, like you [00:21:00] still need a lot of customers and a lot of traffic and visibility to make it work.[00:21:05] And. And, and it just, and there's so many other things that, that go into building a SAS product tech, like technically the product and all that. So with collaborating with a marketer, what I'm finding, I had a tweet about this today, or this week is I think it's a lot more about brand than people like to admit.[00:21:26] And we think about branding, like it's logo design, or it's our colors or something like that. Or you think about brand like it's. Like it's Budweiser in, in city field or something like that, but it's, but for SAS, it's really like, what are you known for on the internet, even, even within circles. And, and pop, like podcasting is a big part of that.[00:21:47] Like I think to this day go historically across all my products, the number one. Source of new customers is hearing me on podcasts either in my own or somebody else's right. [00:22:00] Like by far. And that's one of the hardest things to even track and measure. But I know when every time I ask someone, 90% of the times, like I heard you on a podcast or I follow your podcast.[00:22:11]And and so I, that's not just podcasting specifically, but. I just think that when, when you're talking about brand, like we need to be creating really interesting, unique things for the world for our people that are different, that are worth talking about that are worth sharing. And that stuff has to be more creative today than ever like, yeah.[00:22:31] Like you can't just put out the same stuff that everybody else is putting out. Like you have to, you have to have. New ideas. You have to be advanced. You have to be out there like making arguments for something, you know, you gotta be out there you know, advancing a brand new idea. And in, in a, in a, in a way that's like visually appealing, that's fast to get, to get it.[00:22:50] Like, usually that involves, you know, video and and things like that. And so. So what I'm looking[00:22:56] Matt: [00:22:56] at, can't be just one thing. It can't be one thing anymore, right? Like it [00:23:00] has to be the podcast. It has to be like at minimum it's podcasts, YouTube channel newsletter, blog, blogs sort of fell to fourth place recently, but still like, you need to do it.[00:23:12] And it's almost like one of those thankless you know, like those thankless. Jobs or, or whatever, like you have to keep producing it. Even if people aren't tuning in. This is the funny thing with audiences and content that I've learned over the last few years is. You better keep doing it, even if they're not tuning in, they want to know that you're still doing it because if you stop, oh, if you stop that podcast, they're going to judge you.[00:23:39] And they're going to say like, you didn't do it. Like, even if they're not listening, they know, I know Brian's doing a podcast. That's all I need to say that he's doing it. And he's putting in the[00:23:47] Brian: [00:23:47] effort, you know? It's so, it's true. What you're saying, because like, Like I said, like, podcasts are like impossible to track.[00:23:54] Like you could sort of see how many listeners you're getting, but you don't know how many of those listeners are turning into customers [00:24:00] or leads or whatever, whatever it might be. Or listeners referring other customers. Like that's actually usually how it happens. Right. You know, you can't really track that, but I know for a fact, I have this other podcast, I haven't done it in a while.[00:24:13] It was called a productized podcast is basically an interview show that I've had, it was off and on from my 2017 into 2018. And a little bit in 19, I think. And, and I would go off and on with it. I would do like six, eight months of it, and then I'd do a hiatus and then another six or eight months. And then it's, it's weird.[00:24:34] But I look at the sales graph on like my productized course and my other stuff. And sales go up when I'm podcasting and sales sort of trend down when I'm not podcasting. Like, I don't know, like the trend is definitely there though, you know? Yeah.[00:24:48]Matt: [00:24:48] I want to put on girls' hat for a second here. He would tell you, Brian, why don't you just do the podcast, the YouTube, the content for zip message and hire out.[00:24:59] The [00:25:00] development and the management of like the product itself. So why not? Why not[00:25:05] Brian: [00:25:05] do that? It's a good CR you know, it's funny, I, I sort of joke about this lately. Like the more that I get into product development and, and code it's like the worst I am at marketing and the less interested I am in doing marketing work and content stuff.[00:25:20] So. That's basically it, it's not that I have no interest in it. Like, I, I do enjoy hopping on the mix and getting on podcasts, but I don't enjoy the, the, the grind of, of especially video. I don't mind going on camera once in a while. But I that's, that's one thing is the actual production work. I'm not that interested in doing, I don't, I don't think I'm very good at it.[00:25:42] I could hack through something, but I'm not a professional video person. I'm not also, I'm also very much not interested in being a personal brand. You know, I know that gets, that term gets thrown out, thrown around a lot. And I think to a certain extent, everybody is a [00:26:00] personal brand, whether you like it or want to be or not.[00:26:02]And I'm not denying that, but the company that I'm trying to build right now is a small software company. I don't want it to be. The Brian castle show. I want it to be, we make awesome products and, and we put really cool stuff out into the world, you know? Yeah. That will involve people like, you know, my, my team myself on camera on microphone, but it should be more about the product and the ideas or the questions we're asking to the world then Then then just, just me all the time,[00:26:36] Matt: [00:26:36] you know?[00:26:36] Yeah. I feel, you know, again, it just kind of resonating with what we're doing at Casos and, and, you know, although Craig might not openly say it, like, I think part of the strategy behind it was that because he hosted the audience podcast, which is from Casos and now I largely do that along with a YouTube channel and all this stuff, and it allows that separation.[00:26:59] For [00:27:00] him to just show up on podcasts and show up on the audience podcast where we just recorded one before you and I started jokingly. Like he only shows up when he buys something, right? So we're going through this, this acquisition of podium another podcast hosting company. And when he, we acquired three clips, he came on the show and we talked about like broad visions and where the company's going.[00:27:20] But then the day-to-day is me. And, and on the YouTube channel, I'm largely showing off the products and where we're going with the product. And it allows that separation. So, I totally get it. I'm[00:27:31] Brian: [00:27:31] a different guy and hire for, and the other thing is I really, really love working on product. I like that.[00:27:37] That is, that is me. That is what I do. You know, people might see stuff that I do on like, Productized services and other stuff that that's, that hangs around on the internet for, for many years. But honestly, what I am is I'm I designed software products and that's, that's what I, I love to talk to customers and take customer feedback and [00:28:00] plan and build features that that's what I like to do, you know?[00:28:02] And that, that takes so much time and energy. That there's no way I could do the production, but the content grind and do[00:28:11] Matt: [00:28:11] that, you know, spearhead right back into zip message. And I want to talk about some of the, the, the challenges there in some of these wins that you've had. Let's start specifically with the way you onboarded zip message.[00:28:24] I think I heard you talk about this on your podcast with Jordan. Like, the way that you've done surveys, this isn't the first time you've done this, right? Like you had this onboarding. It's not just, Hey, I take an email. Off they go and they're in the system and then you'll, you'll reach out to them when it's ready.[00:28:39] But you asked a systematic questions here, like, who are you? And you had one specific question. It's not, is it, what are you going to do with the product? Right. When you get access to it, it was a question like that. Like tell me exactly and what you're going to do with it.[00:28:52] Brian: [00:28:52] Yeah. Let's see. Let me pull up one of them today.[00:28:55] See what, see what I actually had on there. So, so [00:29:00] basically the way that it works is you today, you come to the homepage and I haven't yet opened it up for anybody to sign up for zip message. You have to sign up for the early access list. First, you know, you put in your email now, now you're on the email list.[00:29:11] And then on the back end of that, it takes you to this survey page. And the questions on the survey are First, how did, how did you hear about, does that message and vast majority of them say your pockets? What does your business do? What's your role or job title? I like that too, to understand, like who, what do they call themselves?[00:29:29] Right? Are, are they a founder? Are they a marketer? Are they whoever a manager, right. And then in which situations do you prefer to, this is specific to that message, but which situations do you prefer to communicate asynchronously and with who? So I want to start to hear like, and what I'm asking there is how do you currently communicate asynchronously, right?[00:29:49] Not like, would you do this or that in the future, but like H how are you currently doing it? Or have done it in the past. I get a mix of different use cases there. And then which tools. If [00:30:00] any, do you currently use for recording, sharing, receiving video messages? Again, I'm, I'm trying to understand their current or past behavior, not like, would you use this tool in the future?[00:30:11] And then the last one here is how do you think zip message might help you and, and be specific? And so that's where I start to try to get at like, You just told me that you're using these other tools. You just told me that you do a synchronous in these, in these other ways. Why are you even looking at zip message right now?[00:30:30] Right? Like what, what is it about it that you, that you hope would, would be helpful for you? Right.[00:30:35] Matt: [00:30:35] Are you usually this information to reinvest into the product? Or are you at the, at least in the early days saying, you know what, this person, they just might not be. Really, and they might be kicking tires, right?[00:30:46] The old sales term, they might just be kicking tires. Is that what you're trying to do here?[00:30:50] Brian: [00:30:50] It's mostly just research into the market, you know? Cause I started this survey and this list before, before I even really started building it or as I was building it. And it's still up there [00:31:00] today. So, so really I'm just trying to understand like who, who are the people who are interested in this thing that I'm building and, and what are their commonalities?[00:31:07] So, so I have the survey comes into my email, but it also feeds into a spreadsheet. I've done some like, like taking all the data in the spreadsheet, trying to. You know, group, group it like, okay, this percentage of people are in client services. This percentage are in SAS. This percentage are loom users.[00:31:25] This percentage are not, or, or they're using some other tool. Right. And I'm trying to see where the patterns are. And then that helps me understand, like, I've already done this, right? Like the homepage on zip message. Now I've gone through probably three iterations on the whole site already, just in the last couple of months.[00:31:43] And. The F the very first version was just sort of like my gut idea for this new, this new product idea. And after getting feedback from surveys like this, I realized like, oh, there's a whole lot that was wrong in the way that I wrote and presented the [00:32:00] idea. And there's all these other really common things that people latch onto.[00:32:03] I was talking about like the, the the, the conversational aspect of it, the, the threaded conversation. That was not front and center in my first take at it. And that quickly became the thing. So now it's like this big animated thing on the, on the top of the homepage, that's shows you that the conversation.[00:32:21] Yeah.[00:32:22] Matt: [00:32:22] You can get a feel for, you know, if everybody's saying, let's say loom, we'll use them as an example. Again, you can bucket and find trends in pricing in their own marketing, you know, and you can quickly find out if somebody says loom, like, let's say six months from now and you say, okay, loom user comes in.[00:32:38] They might expect a free plan. Cause loom has a five minute free thing and you kind of understand. From a, you know, whatever churn and conversion ratio you can say, okay, a hundred people sign up looking for loom. I know that these people are gonna be the hardest ones to sell. Cause there might be expecting free and we don't have free here, so we can kind of gauge our interests.[00:32:59] And you just got to this[00:33:00] [00:32:59] Brian: [00:32:59] stage right now, you know, we're still early on, we're recording this when I'm only about five months into zip message. So at this stage, it's, it's really more, more about. What, what should I prioritize? And what should I not prioritize in terms of which things to build, who, who should we be speaking to on the marketing site?[00:33:20]That, that's what I'm looking for in, in the surveys. And then I, and then I do read all the surveys and then I invite a lot of them to calls and I, and, and the surveys reading, what they wrote is a, is a way for me to understand, like, I have a few hundred of these people. I can't talk to all of them. I shouldn't talk to all of them.[00:33:38] I need to know who are the best people from this group that I, that I should be talking to and, and reading their responses helps me kind of narrow that down.[00:33:47] Matt: [00:33:47] This looks like the, and I don't mean any offense by this of your past products, but this seems like the most simplistic, yet powerful tool that you've built.[00:33:58] Right? Like, I feel like from what I've seen [00:34:00] you launch. Interface wise branding wise. Like I get it. It makes total sense. I understand the use case, the user interface. Like I was just saying, it's super easy to understand, you know, what you're going to press in order to get a result. It looks like the most lightweight, yet most impactful product you've ever you've ever built in a short amount of time.[00:34:22] Is that yeah.[00:34:25] Brian: [00:34:25] Yeah. Really? That's what I'm going for with this To be honest. I didn't, I didn't know. Again, it's super new. I didn't know that, like right now you can call it a pretty horizontal product. It, it, I'm already seeing like many different use cases and different types of customers who were interested in using it.[00:34:44] And once I saw that sort of horizontal nature start to. Reveal itself that got me a little bit worried about zit message. You might've heard on the podcast with Jordan. Like I, I was starting to say like, how can I niche this down? How can I talk to this [00:35:00] niche or that niche, and then really make that message, the tool for whatever coaches or teachers or podcasters or whatever it might be.[00:35:08]I explored that a little bit, but at the end, but I've come around since then to say, like for right now it just is horizontal. And, and we're going to see where this goes. Like it has, you know, a bunch of first customers right now. We'll see how this evolves over the rest of the year. And then if, if there is.[00:35:27] One or two groups that emerge of like, these are the best customers, then maybe we'll double down on that, but maybe not, maybe we'll, it'll just be horizontal. And then we'll have like niche use case pages on the site and stuff like that, but I'm sort of still still exploring. And there's so much, it's a very simple product in terms of it.[00:35:48] It basically does one thing really well, this asynchronous conversation, but within that, there are so many little details. We're not even close to having built everything [00:36:00] that we need to be building. So it's like, yeah.[00:36:02] Matt: [00:36:02] It's of many products and, and this is the challenge, right? This is going to be the challenge for you.[00:36:09]You know, moving forward, I don't know of many, you know, paid for products. In other words, a customer has to go and pay for it that really can survive the simplicity of where the product. You know, starts off. Look at loom as an example, my God, there's like 50 billion things that it does now. I'm just like, I don't need all this.[00:36:31] And what happens is the customer like myself goes, I don't, I don't need all of these things, you know, popping out at me telling me what I should be doing. Like inviting collaborate. Like I don't need all that stuff. Where is the product that, let me just record that video and quickly share it. I guess the challenge is, is once you start getting to a certain.[00:36:52]User amount of users, capacity network, capacity, storage capacity. I don't know what the costs are internally, but then it's like, [00:37:00] how do we monetize this play? So that's another simple note is the only product I know that has survived, like being simple. As a product, but they're also not charging for it and it's owned by automatic.[00:37:11] So there's a billion dollars behind it. It doesn't matter.[00:37:13] Brian: [00:37:13] Yeah. You know, task managers are just, yeah. You gotta, you gotta have huge pockets to make that work. Same thing with loom. They're, they have a very generous, free plan. And it is difficult for someone like me to compete with them, you know, just be perfectly honest.[00:37:27]And, and I thought about doing free, not close to the idea someday, but right now it's not, we're not doing a free plan. Yeah. And you know, we're, we are differentiating in certain key ways that, that a certain set of customers seem, seem to be perfectly fine with, you know, and I'm still experimenting with different pricing, but it's But it has paying customers already and it's growing.[00:37:50]So we'll see. I, wasn't going to say the the, the simplicity thing is hard. Because, and I think this goes back to like choosing to get into zip message coming from process kit. Right? Cause one of the, [00:38:00] one of the challenges with process kit was like, it started getting first, very first customers like that.[00:38:08] Just a very small handful of first paying customers within like six, seven months or so after, after breaking ground on, on the code really call it like eight or nine months. If you include the early research but it wasn't until well, over a year of building features before process kicked got actually like really useful for people.[00:38:26]Cause cause that product is so much more complex, you know, complex that like you can't just have a glorified to-do list. As a, as a process tool, you know, there's, there's no reason to pay for that. When you could just use any other to-do list, you have to have the automations, the conditional logic, the, the, the reason why people want to use like smart SLPs, which is what process kit does.[00:38:52] We need a really, really robust Zapier integration and all this different kind of stuff. It took well over a year to get there. And then even [00:39:00] into the second year, there were a lot of important. Features that, that added value in that. And then that's where the, where the customer base, you know, likes to it has that like automations people who are super into auto automating everything in their business, they love process kit, but like, yeah, it took a good year and a half to really have a product to give them, you know, whereas like zip message.[00:39:23] It was, I was able to build, I guess, call it an MVP. Within a couple of months, And and now we're just trying to refine and build that, build that[00:39:32] Matt: [00:39:32] out. Yeah. And you can see the excitement. Like I can, I can, obviously, if you're watching the video, you see the excitement, but if like I can hear the excitement when you talk about it and your other podcasts.[00:39:43] And when I see you tweet about it I can always tell the kind of good mood you're in when I see your Twitter, when I see your tweets coming out, but even go down to like the branding. And like your approach to this, like the branding stuff that I put out publicly. You don't,[00:39:57] Brian: [00:39:57] you don't see me like throwing chairs in here the rest of the day, right?[00:40:01] [00:40:00] Matt: [00:40:01] No, but it, it, it comes across and like your approach to this product. I can tell that you're, you're becoming much more mature, you know, from, from when I first met you, which I probably say every time I interview a you at this point, cause like when I first met you onstage at WordCamp Providence, talking about restaurant engine, which was your, which was your original foray into SAS.[00:40:22]You know, this one is definitely something that looks like you're, you're really passionate about. Like, this will be the one that, that the history books really write a big chapter on you about you know, it[00:40:31] Brian: [00:40:31] seems like a well it's, it's funny to hear you describe that. I've have heard similar things from people like listening to the podcast and stuff.[00:40:40]And, and I, I appreciate that really. And I, I, a lot of it, I do feel, but. Also at this stage of trying many different products over the years the maturity thing I think has leads to what I actually think is pretty healthy skepticism of, of everything. I think you do need [00:41:00] to go into a new product with a lot of skepticism, you know, I'm, I'm still skeptical.[00:41:04] Like I'm still trying to understand that question. Like why, like people who are interested in that message. Like convince me, like, why are you really interested in this product? Like, why are you interested in it? I need to know that. And, and and I need to prove that and continuously, you know, it's It's just a process to, of like building confidence in like, okay, I think there's something here.[00:41:31] I think there's something here. Okay. Now I'm going to really double down investments here and, and, and that sort of stuff, you[00:41:38] Matt: [00:41:38] know, I think in a space, a final sort of final question thoughts around around this I'd imagine that. The pandemic COVID audio video, very hot spaces. Now that everyone was forced to work from home.[00:41:53]I think the video space obviously is going to be interesting. Audio is going to be interesting. But also probably quite challenging was, you know, [00:42:00] building process kit out is probably just a lot of thought. A lot of logic. You probably don't need a lot of CPU and infrastructure around this stuff.[00:42:07] Video, I'd imagine maybe a little bit more right. And storage, bandwidth, conversion, all this[00:42:12] Brian: [00:42:12] stuff. It, it definitely is more complex. I do have a great developer working with me. And I have learned a ton about handling video on the web in the last couple of months. It, it's definitely a challenge for sure.[00:42:26]There are some aspects of it that were a little bit. Easier than I, than I expected. And, and when I did some early technical research on it, it was part of, part of the reason why I decided to go into it and not be completely scared off because it's video. I started researching it a bit. I was like, oh wow.[00:42:45] We can actually do this sort of thing in browsers these days, which wasn't exactly possible even like one or two, three years ago. So that's kind of cool, but there's definitely. There, there are definitely costs in terms of bandwidth and processing of [00:43:00] videos and storage and, and playback. And there are just reliability issues of, of making sure that every time you hit record, no matter which browser you're in, it works.[00:43:10]You know, we're, we're constantly working with users to, to, to smooth that out and, and make an, and, you know, you might, you might think that everybody is using Google Chrome, everything it[00:43:21] Matt: [00:43:21] is. God, I hope[00:43:24] Brian: [00:43:24] not. You know, I'm, I'm literally seeing from from the user base, the, the small user base here, was it messaged that it's a, it's a good mix of Chrome safari Firefox.[00:43:34] You know, iOS, Android, like it's, it's a mix we've got to make them work. So that's a challenge,[00:43:40] Matt: [00:43:40] basic stuff. Brian castle zip message.com, a sync video conversations with customers and colleagues. I love the fact that you have the little arrow that points to what's. This led async to help define asynchronous, because I tell you that if I told my dad, Hey, check out this asynchronous video conversation tool, you might be like, what the hell is?[00:43:59]He's [00:44:00] not. And competent, but he might be like, what do you mean asynchronous? But he screen-sharing video sharing. He would get it. But I like how you define it there so[00:44:07] Brian: [00:44:07] that, you know, and that came out of the feedback. Because the very first, I think the very first version of the homepage, I did use the word asynchronous.[00:44:15] Maybe not in the H one, but somewhere around there. And, and I got a lot of feedback saying like, ah, I don't really know what, like literally people would ask me, like, what does asynchronous mean? And then other people would be like, I, I sorta know what it means, but I think most people don't know what that means.[00:44:30] And then, and then I backed off of it for a while. Like, oh, it's just for video conversations or video messaging, something like that. And I just didn't use the word asynchronous, but then it occurred to me that like, No, like we should own the, the term async, you know, cause that is growing in popularity.[00:44:48] Like people are starting to use it more often. So, so I want that message to be known for async conversations. But we have a little definition there for computer skills. You're [00:45:00] brand new to it. You know,[00:45:00]Matt: [00:45:00] Zip message.com. Request an invite@zipmessage.com. Brian, thanks for hanging out and talking to us today on your podcast.[00:45:07] It's your podcast at this point go, go to dot com and request an invite and maybe we'll see Brian again. Hopefully not, hopefully not. We don't see you in another six months talking about the[00:45:16] Brian: [00:45:16] product goal is to never be on that report. Again,[00:45:20] Matt: [00:45:20] it's amazing stuff. Everybody else, Matt report.com airport.com/subscribe to join the mailing list.[00:45:26] We'll see you in the next episode. ★ Support this podcast ★

Welcome back Brian Casel, for his 5th time appearing on the show! Maybe we'll keep him away for at least another year — or until he launches another product.